Last season, Oregon witnessed the Arizona Wildcats capture the national championship in Sun River.
This season, the Ducks will make no such return trip to the NCAAs after failing to qualify at the NCAA West Regional, which was won by those same Wildcats.
The Oregon women’s golf team finished a respectable ninth-place in the 21-team field Saturday at Trysting Golf Course in Corvallis, but it wasn’t enough to extend its season.
The Ducks ended with a three-round score of 923 (308-304-311), but they were still seven strokes behind the mark they would have needed to secure an NCAA bid.
“Our goal was to put ourselves into a position to have a chance and that’s exactly what we did,” Oregon head coach Shannon Rouillard said. “After seeing the competition we were up against, we did very well to finish ninth.”
Oregon’s top finisher was, of course, senior leader Jerilyn White, but the All-America candidate’s stellar career came to an end after barely missing the mark to qualify for the NCAAs as an individual. White shot a final round of 74 to finish tied-for-16th overall with a 224, only two strokes shy of the necessary score needed to advance.
After Friday’s round two, the Ducks sat in 10th-place and knew that they would have to somehow pass eighth-place Tennessee and probably either Southern California or Washington, who sat in seventh- and ninth-place, respectively. Oregon did surpass the Volunteers in Saturday’s final round, but couldn’t nudge past either Pacific-10 Conference rival.
“We were right there in it, but we made a few too many mistakes coming down the stretch,” Rouillard said. “We got by Tennessee, but we just couldn’t get Washington or USC and that just goes to show how tough the Pac-10 is.”
Of the final top-10 teams at the regional, eight were from the Pac-10, including first-place Arizona, Stanford (2nd), UCLA (4th), Arizona State (6th), Washington (7th), USC (8th), Oregon and Oregon State (10th).
The Wildcats repeated their West Regional championship with a score of 868, 20 strokes ahead of the Cardinal, and appear poised to repeat their NCAA title at the May 22-25 NCAA Championships.
Other Oregon finishers included junior Kathy Cho (tied-for-29th, 230), freshman Lacy Erickson (tied-for-45th, 234), senior Dawn Berry (tied-for-50th) and sophomore Megan Heckeroth (tied-for-84th, 245).
“I’m really proud of this team,” Rouillard said. “We made this a great learning experience for our younger players and our seniors will go out knowing that even though we didn’t advance to nationals, we put forth our best overall effort of the season.”